Crawley Borough Council

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The leader of Crawley Borough Council has told Sussex Police to "get a grip on the wave of drugs and violence affecting Crawley".

Peter Lamb took to social media the day after a 24-year-old man was stabbed in The Boulevard, and a couple of weeks after a manslaughter investigation was launched into the death of a pensioner who had been attacked in the same road.

When Sussex Police responded, outlining work being carried out with the National Crime Agency to combat organised crime, Mr Lamb said more officers were needed if any "real headway" was to be made.

He added: "We've highlighted to the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for years how that could be afforded within existing spending constraints.

"We're living with the consequences of that failure now."

When asked about Mr Lamb's comments, Sussex PCC Katy Bourne pointed out that, in January, the borough council's representative on the Police and Crime Panel had voted against increasing the amount of money given to police through the council tax precept.

Chief Inspector Rosie Ross said "proactive and robust" action was being taken to tackle serious violence in the town, including an increase in patrols in crime hotspots.

She added: "The violence is obviously distressing but I can assure local people that we are doing all we can, taking targeted action to help keep them safe."

The number of Crawley Borough councillors will drop from 37 to 36 if proposed changes to the electoral boundaries come into effect next May.

The Local Government Boundary Commission is in the process of carrying out a review which would see changes to a number of the town's current wards.

Residents have until 13 August to take part in a public consultation.

Crawley's boundary review is one of 39 being carried out across the country, so each councillor will represent approximately the same number of electors.

Crawley last underwent an electoral review in 2002, when the number of councillors was increased from 32 to 37, and the number of wards from 13 to 15. If the proposed changes go ahead, the number of wards will go back to 13, 10 of which will be represented by three councillors and three by two councillors.

The loss of one councillor could have interesting consequences for Crawley's political landscape.

A scheme to relocate Crawley Borough Council's data centre to Surrey is more than a year behind schedule and has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds more than its original budget.

Plans to migrate the data to an outside host site were made in 2015, with work expected to begin by March 2016.

It was scheduled to take six to nine months to complete on a capital budget of £209,000 and £63,300 per year revenue.

A meeting of the council's audit committee has been told that the work has still not been completed and the costs, as of 31 May, stood at more than £700,000.

A report from the council's internal audit and risk management team stated that capital expenditure had been £461,980, with revenue costs at £426,303.

But some costs relating to other IT projects had been incorrectly charged to the data centre migration project, making the actual costs £703,668.78.

Crawley Borough Council

Crawley Borough Council has approved an application to expand the number of parking spaces at the K2 leisure centre.

The council's planning committee heard that demand for parking at the centre, in Brighton Road, regularly exceeded the number of spaces available.

The centre currently has 472 parking spaces, but a survey carried out in February said demand was so high that 26 cars were seen to be parked in unauthorised areas on one Monday evening alone.

In addition, it said parking stress for drivers using regular bays and parent and child bays was "100%" all day Saturday and almost all of Monday.

The figure was 73% for people using the disabled bays.

Additional spaces will be found by removing 27 trees and the landscaped islands dotted throughout the car park, while changing the layout of the parking bays.